[Artemisia] Judging Cordials

[Catherine Helm-Clark]

In the period medicine department, I would look for books
like Platina's, which are best billed as "heathy eating" cook-
books and volumes of medical alchemy.  Trust me, the
cookbooks are more readable.  Just the first ten pages of
something like _The Triumphant Chariot of Antimony_
will leave you blithering in the corner for a few weeks...
Very hard reading, brain farts, the whole nine yards of
utter incomprehensibility - 50 pages of it before you even
get to the first medicine recipe...  Period medicines are not
easy to research or to comprehend.

Ok, I went looking for an online Platina or the equivalent
that might have something to say about the health benefits
of cordials.  Platina would be an excellent place to start
for looking at period attitudes toward the health benefits
of cordials since his cookbook was really a volume on the
health benefits of certain foods (FYI, the armoured turnips
recipe so famous in the SCA is out of Platina, where it is
billed as a healthy dish to entice invalids to eat something)

While I did not find an online version of Platina (and I don't
own a paper copy myself), I found an interesting little
historical food blog where one of the commenters mentioned
translating out of a period Italian source of "healthy food
recipes" where he had just finished with reading about
recipes for ink, an enema and two cordials...

So I hunted down this gentle's web site, where I did not
find the recipes for ink, an enema and two cordials, but
I did find this:

http://www.coquinaria.nl/english/recipes/4histrecept.htm

If I can find the ingredients in the middle of winter in
Idaho, I know what I might be cooking tonight...

ttfn
Therasia von GottaMakeSomeBlueSauce